US President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order for the “Genesis Mission”, a national campaign to use artificial intelligence (AI) to boost scientific breakthroughs. In the opening section, the mission is explicitly described as “comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project”.
The comparison is compelling, but also misleading. At first glance, the order evokes the image of America in the 1940s, muscular and confident, mobilising the whole nation to end World War II. A close reading, however, reveals a different reality.
Los Alamos in 1942 bears little resemblance to Silicon Valley in 2025. The difference is not technical but structural. With Washington planning to integrate resources from the Department of Energy and tech giants in California, the Genesis Mission signals a fundamental retreat of US state capacity: America has devolved from a sovereign owner to a mere tenant.
The Manhattan Project – to produce the first nuclear weapons – was defined by state sovereignty. Although private contractors like Chrysler and DuPont were involved, the federal government was the undisputed architect. It seized the land, hired the scientists and set the agenda – and, most importantly, it controlled the research patents. The state owned the engine of innovation.
With the Genesis Mission, the relationship is inverted. Section 3 of the executive order requires that the secretary of energy secure access to “proprietary” data sets; Section 5 demands the establishment of “clear policies for ownership … and commercialisation of intellectual property”. Evidently, Washington is not creating knowledge at the frontier of science, but standing in line like any other customer, seeking to buy tech services it does not own, control or even understand.
Worse, Washington cannot guarantee the money. The phrase “subject to available appropriations” appears six times in the order, revealing the mission as an unfunded mandate. This explains why section 3 instructs the DOE to ““identify … resources available through industry partners.”